The organizers of the 2015 European Shinkyokushin Karate Championships are members of the World Karate Organization (WKO). For many years, the WKO has been making strenuous efforts to include full contact karate as an olympic sport for the first time in history during the 2020 Games in Tokyo. The process of including new sports in the Olympic Games is extremely complex and multi-step. It requires strong involvement of not only the sports organizations and decision makers but also all people who practice them. At the end of 2014, the WKO organized a worldwide signature-collecting campaign supporting the inclusion of full contact karate in the official categories of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. The campaign was a tremendous success as over 1 million signatures were collected in 38 countries which proves huge involvement of the full contact karate society to support the cause. Another important thing is that in December 2014, the International Olympic Committee passed a number of reforms intended to make the world’s biggest sporting event cheaper to stage and more attractive for host countries at a special session of the 104 member IOC in Monaco. The IOC abolished the cap of 28 sports for the Summer Games to move to an ‘events-based’ system, allowing new competitions to come in. Instead, it set a limit of about 10,500 athletes and 310 medal events. It allows Tokyo, a host city of the 2020 Olympic Games, to include its own proposals of new competitions. Thanks to that, it seems that a great Olympic dream of many karate athletes all over the world can soon come true.

The registration of athletes participating in the European Shinkyokushin Karate Championships opens on 1 February 2015 and closes on 31 March 2015. The registration forms will be available on main web page.